


Slice

by silentdescant



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hell, Psychological Trauma, Torture, Trauma, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-22
Updated: 2015-01-22
Packaged: 2018-03-08 13:56:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,158
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3211631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentdescant/pseuds/silentdescant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alastair's slithering, serpentine voice rasps tauntingly from the dark corner where he observes, out of sight but never out of mind. Dean can hear the disappointment in his tone, and that spurs him on almost as much as the the taunt. He selects a sharper blade, a scalpel rather than his more familiar bowie knife, and turns his attention back to the soul stretched on his rack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slice

"Oh, Dean, is this really the best you can do?"

Alastair's slithering, serpentine voice rasps tauntingly from the dark corner where he observes, out of sight but never out of mind. Dean can hear the disappointment in his tone, and that spurs him on almost as much as the the taunt. He selects a sharper blade, a scalpel rather than his more familiar bowie knife, and turns his attention back to the soul stretched on his rack.

Dean has learned, during his time in hell, that different people see different things. Some see a fiery pit, while others see a dungeon and torture chambers. Dean used to see an empty void, full of pain and darkness, but he's since learned to see other things. He's learned to manifest things: objects, at first, and then entire rooms for his use. Alastair tortured him in an old-fashioned hospital operating theater, with a raised dais in the center and benches for an audience circling the top of the high walls. It was a small space that made Dean feel both claustrophobic and exposed, as it put his shame and his fears on full display.

After Dean turned the tables and began torturing souls himself, he constructed a space he feels more confident in: an abandoned warehouse with rusty metal tables for his tools and leaking pipes creating puddles on the wide, open floor. Alastair added his own personal touches, of course, because he can never let Dean be truly comfortable in hell, but after so long on the receiving end of Alastair's torture, the minor changes to his environment are only an annoyance.

The souls took Dean a while to really see. When he was alone in the void, with only the swirling demons to torment him, other human souls simply didn't exist. When he was being tortured, Alastair kept him secluded, and he could only see other demons. He could hear the other souls, though. He could hear them screaming, as if they were only in the next room. Dean's first interaction with a human soul in hell was the one he'd agreed to torture.

It appeared to him, as soon as he'd made the decision, as an androgynous human figure. It was naked but it had no genitals, no defining features. It was simply a human body, sallow skin stretched over meat stretched over bone, and it glowed faintly like it was under bright moonlight. Alastair was at Dean's side, his slender, cold fingers cupping Dean's hand as he gripped the handle of his knife. Dean manifested his own instruments of torture, familiar hunting weapons, things he'd been trained to use since he was a child, and Alastair approved. He guided Dean's hand and directed the knife to the center of the soul's emaciated chest.

Once Dean had made the first cut and found that souls didn't bleed red--instead spilling light like dripping, liquid mercury--it became easy to tear into the faceless body. He flayed it even as it screamed, a high-pitched, inhuman noise, and he took out all his frustration, all his hurt, all his fear and shame and trauma on the poor soul. When the drops of light splashed to the warehouse floor, they dimmed and disappeared, and Dean continued his torture until nothing of the glowing soul remained but the empty shell of a body. It lived, of course, because it couldn't die, but what Dean came to think of as the magic of the soul was destroyed.

Dean wonders every day what his own soul looks like, if there's even any glowing magic left inside him or if he's dead and empty inside too, or even worse, black and thick like demon smoke, choking him from the inside out.

The scalpel is one of Alastair's favorite instruments, and he delights in Dean's use of it. He trained Dean, and he's visibly proud of Dean's work. He praises Dean's elegant slices, and he brags to other demons about how perfect Dean is, how obedient and skillful, how magnificently dangerous and evil.

Dean returns to the soul. He sees faces now, because he wants to. He doesn't know if they're the souls' true faces or merely his own imagination, but he likes seeing their features contort as he rips them to pieces. He extracts every drop of magic inside them and makes them watch as it fades to nothing. He keeps them aware and present as he destroys them. He wants them to feel every moment of the pain he inflicts. It's only fair. He had to suffer so much more than they did, and they deserve it so much more than he did.

"That's it," Alastair murmurs from the shadows. "Show me what's inside."

Following his master's gentle prompting, Dean slices into the body before him--an old man with wrinkled skin and weak muscles. He peels back layer upon layer of skin and fat and muscle and exposes the glowing soul within. Behind him, Alastair breathes out his pleasure and invites Dean to watch with him as the glow fades from the man. Dean steps backwards into the shadow, into Alastair's waiting arms, and watches.

The glow fades and the mercury-smooth magic sloughs off the exposed insides of the man until there's nothing left surrounding his skeleton but tangled intensities and squishy, disgusting organs. Alastair's hands on Dean's torso trace sickening lines across his skin, like he's feeling out where Dean's intestines and guts are located, but Dean doesn't move away. Alastair won't cut into him anymore. That was part of their deal. Dean is no longer scared.

He thinks the magic has faded out of him. He doesn't feel anything now but righteous, all-consuming anger. He want nothing more than to hurt everyone around him the way he was hurt. He wants them to feel what he's gone through, because he can't stand it any longer. He can't keep it inside himself. He has to share this pain, and he wants to share it with Alastair. He wants to rip into Alastair like the demon carved into him, but it will never happen, so instead, Dean inflicts his wrath on the souls paraded into his studio of torture, where Alastair watches and praises him like a master praising an apprentice, a star pupil.

"That's it, Dean, my sweet boy," Alastair whispers again. "Now do it again."

The wrinkled, lifeless body of the man shimmers and disappears and is immediately replaced with a new soul, fresh to the pit. This girl is young and defiant, fire in her eyes, and Dean feels his own fire rise up in response. He shudders at the feel of Alastair's icy breath on the back of his neck and waits for Alastair to release him, to sic him on this new soul.

"Take it apart," Alastair commands silkily. "Show her every piece as it dies when you cut it off."

Dean will start with the fingers.

 

 _fin_.


End file.
